“You’re so good at that. Such a natural.”
He didn’t try to feed her again, raising his hands as if he didn’t trust himself.
“Let’s not jinx this. Adalyn will only eat for you, it seems. I don’t want her to go hungry.”
And that’s what had captured my heart. Aside from being charismatic and handsome, Spencer made me feel needed. Ofcourse, that twisted itself around eventually and became what I resented most.
While preparing chamomile tea, I pull out jars of dried juniper, lavender, and bay laurel, then dig my old dream pillow out of a chest. I haven’t had to poke herbs into the small satin case and sleep with it beneath my regular pillow in a long time. It can’t be a coincidence that a figure from my past drops into my life again and now my subconscious is in upheaval.
My house is quiet save for raindrops pitting the roof, the hum of my oscillating fan, the low whir of a car engine. I peel a scrap of diaphanous curtain from the window that faces the back alley, where a black truck is idling, puffs of smoke juddering from the tailpipe. It’s just before six in the morning, gloomy night rain beginning to abate as a diamond of rising sun sputters through the trees. Farther down the road, a trash truck’sbeep, beep, beephelps to tug me into the present.
When I push my door open, I hear the black truck take off, which prompts my chickens to cluck lowly as they toddle down from their coop to explore the garden. I scatter their feed, collect their eggs, murmuring softly. My chickens are Silkies—sweet, fluffy, domesticated birds that are perfect as garden pets because they’re happy to be kept in confinement and they’re gentle with my plants. They also love cuddles and attention. I say hello to Rosemary, Chickpea, Violetta, Suki, and Miss Fig, giving the ever-demanding Suki a disproportionate amount of nuzzling. For now, I’m a bird and flower mom.
I perform my morning garden inspection, pruning spotted leaves, counting blooms, dreaming of a someday in which my home is loud with voices, footsteps, noisy toys. When I’m all alone, I allow my little envies to pass over me like clouds: the parentswho send their kids off to preschool with their shirts on backward because they’re busy with so many kids, and perhaps their job’s calling them about a problem they need to fix, and maybe they’ve got to tidy up because their in-laws are about to pop by with little notice, while two dogs are going wild with zoomies.
I know I’ve probably idealized this, that busy parents probably wish they had more quiet time alone, so I’d never voice these thoughts aloud (I knowexactlywhat Luna would say), but I’m wistful for it, anyway. I do love my life, and it certainly isn’t dull. It’s rich and wonderful even without children. It’s just that... I want kids so much that it’s a bit like sitting in a waiting room or being on hold for a really long time, waiting for my favorite part of my life to begin.
Whenever I voice my desire for a good, solid, dependable man (usually in the most detached tone I can muster, so that I’m not perceived as desperate), the replies usually roll in like this:What’s the rush? Love arrives when you’re not looking. Date yourself! You don’t need a man to be happy. Just get some sex toys.As if it’s such a bad thing, wishing I were in a relationship, that I had someone I could be close to all through the night, who would trust me with their secrets, their fears, their happiness, and who I could entrust with my own. It’s the same whenever somebody asks where I see myself in five years, ten years, or what I want the most—the answer is to be a mom. I have other desires and interests, of course, and I’ve started to reply with those instead—that I want to branch out in my fortunes, maybe at Ohio carnivals and fairs, as well as putting together a family grimoire. The sort of goals that I could achieve on my own. Because whenever I admit that I want to be a mother most of all, the responses to this, too, can be awkward.
What’s the rush? Enjoy being single and not having kids, becauseonce you have them, you’re locked in it for life!Basically telling me to be grateful for not having what I really, really want. And almost always, this unhelpful retort falls from the mouth of a parent. Only other nonparents, ones whowantto be parents, tend to validate this deep longing. Even Luna, who I love with all my soul, slings back a sarcastic “Take mine” whenever I mention wanting kids. I know she’s just joking, but she can only joke about it because she’s lucky enough to be a mom already. We are a vast population of hurting hearts that miss people who haven’t come into our lives yet.
I want to give my little ones piggyback rides and play hide-and-seek with them and teach them how to tend a strawberry garden, help them trace the letters of their names, take them on nature walks, listen to their dreams, show them the best parts of the human experience and help them to navigate those parts that aren’t so light and easy. I want a family that is loud, goofy, exuberant at home because they know this istheirplace, where they can be themselves through and through, and be loved for it.
Someday. For now, I still have today, and I will make it a lovely one.
The next few hours blur:Good morningandI’ll give you a dollar if you bring me a bagelto Aisling;Yes, I took those to the post office yesterdayto Luna;Put that downto Morgan;You’re lateto Trevor. My thoughts cut into a dozen facets—the little girl in her playroom, the man who stared directly at me and said it was all for my own good; and of course, a different face that’s aged a decade somehow, with thick, lowered eyebrows, a questioning air. A mystery, when I used to know him inside out, translucent as a glasswing butterfly. I’m concentrating so hard on that face, trying to dissect it, that I must summon his image from memory, transplanting it onto the sidewalk outside The Magick Happens.
When my eyes connect with Alex’s through the window, it’s a lightning bolt hurled from the sky, directly down my spine, radiating outward to every bone. His chin is tilted down, face forward, a grim set to his mouth. His mother stands at his left, fiddling with her purse, eager stare devouring our sidewalk sandwich board, our sign, our hundreds of candles on display.
When Alex sees me watching, he automatically opens the door for Kristin, both finally entering. I’ve been taping primroses to florist’s wire for a customer who called the shop to tell me about two men she’s torn between, and she’s hoping for a flower crown that will help bring clarity.
“Hi, there!” I gesture to a familiar black truck parked out front. “Did you happen to drive down the alley earlier?”
“No.” Alex cuts our eye contact, focus shifting to Dottie’s crystal ball on the mantel, the dusty purple candle beside it.
“Really? Because that truck looks exactly like—”
“The roads here are ridiculous,” he interrupts. “Too narrow. I’m going to get a mirror broken off.”
My nose wrinkles. Moonville born-and-raised, and after a few years away, he thinks he can insult our inconveniently narrow roads. Who does he think he is?
“Is that a cat?”
I follow Kristin’s line of sight to a black lump with yellow eyes, curled up in a loaf on top of a shelf. She extends her fingers, but Jingle backs away, hackles raised.
“Jingle’s not much of a people person,” I tell her. “Our people person is Snapdragon. Don’t worry, he’ll find you and force you to pet him. We have another cat, Mellow, but he’s a ghost, so you probably won’t notice him. My niece says he mostly sleeps in the front window.” I smile broadly at Kristin. “Good to see you again.”
“I haven’t been in this store since your grandma ran it.” She cranes her neck to get an eyeful of everything. “Goodness! So many candles. How is Miss Dottie doing, anyway?”
I feel Luna’s eyes on my back, from where she sits in quiet conversation with a customer.
“She passed last year.”
Kristin hugs her purse tighter. “I’m so sorry to hear that.”
I nod. There aren’t words that pay justice to Dottie, to how badly she’s missed, so I don’t insult her memory by offering paltry ones. The truth is that it feels like she’s been gone for much longer than a year. By the time she departed this world, the only person she could consistently recognize was Luna.
My grandmother taught us that the world is more than it seems, and so are we. That we all have a little bit of stardust inside of us.
